I write a little blurb in the Hartford Courant most mornings. It’s 500 characters, around 100 words. There is a finite space allotted and I can’t color outside the lines! I have to write about the weather, but beyond that they’re pretty flexible.
Tomorrow morning’s piece is about accuracy in forecasting. Not how accurate I am, but when is the toughest time to forecast.
The simple answer is right now!
We are most accurate when systems are flying by. When they move s-l-o-w-l-y we start to sweat!
Should I lie? This is how it is.
I’m not totally sure why this is so, but the most likely answer is systems move slowly when upper air influence is low. A gentle nudge from a lesser force won’t mean much to a low pressure system doing 35 mph, but when that same system is progressing at walking speed the nudge is a more significant portion of the puzzle.
We see this a lot in tropical systems. Most of the time they’re in very light upper air and creeping along. That’s when we complain how tough they are to predict.
As we head to winter the jet stream will pick up and these lazy lows won’t appear as often. We won’t have 100% accuracy, but we’ll do better than we did this weekend. Like I didn’t know you noticed.